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ALBANIA'S CLERICS LEAD A REBIRTH

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
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"Even a dog would not have slept where we had to," said Haxhi Hafiz Sabri Koci, the religious leader of Albania's Muslims, the largest of this country's three major religions.

Mr. Koci, whose title is Mufti, showed his hands -- toilworn, the joints of some fingers swollen out of shape from his years in prison.

"Twenty-one years at hard labor," he said, nodding toward them. "In the copper mines. I was a welder, a plumber. I did every kind of work, just like the other prisoners. They were mainly political."

At the age of 71, Mr. Koci and other clergymen -- Muslim, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox -- have stepped out of the shadows of nearly a half-century of persecution and are leading a rebirth of religion. Of the population of three million, estimates are that more than 65 percent are nominally Muslim, 20 percent Orthodox and 13 percent Catholic. Icons Ripped Out

The Albanian Orthodox Annunciation Church in the center of this capital is beginning to resemble what it was until the old Government ripped out the iconostasis, the wall of icons that is a feature of Orthodox churches, painted over the frescoes and destroyed most paintings while sending the oldest to a museum. Workers are busy reconverting the church, which has served as a gymnasium.

A wizened man entered and crossed himself. He made his way through the masons at work to the rear of the iconostasis, then knelt, kissed some sacred pages and muttered a prayer.

He was the Rev. Theodor Plushko, 74 years old, returning to a consecrated church for the first time since the Government closed his village church in the north in 1967 and gave the roof tiles and other removable materials to a collective farm. Father Plushko was sent to work in its orchards. Asked if his church wwould be repaired, he answered, "With God's help."

Albania staged a witchhunt for people in all religions, like other nations where Communist Governments took power in Eastern Europe in 1944-45. Then, in 1967, Albania's dictator, Enver Hoxha, declared this country officially atheist and wrote the ban on all religious observance into the Constitution.

Then, without public announcement, the wreckers went to work throughout the country to raze and gut what leaders of all faiths now estimate to have been 95 percent of the mosques and churches.

The few that were spared were either marked by plaques identifying them, without mentioning their purpose, as "cultural monuments," like this capital's 18th-century Ethem Bej Mosque, or desecrated for state use, like the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Shkodra, once the seat of an archbishop, which became a sports arena.

Religious leaders of different faiths now speak hopefully of rebuilding plans, but in this impoverished country's state of economic collapse and total dependence on foreign aid even for its minimal food needs, construction is not at the top of the agenda.

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Bardhyl Fico, a Muslim cartoonist who heads the new State Secretariat for Religion, said of Mr. Hoxha's campaign to destroy religious buildings: "He also destroyed the human soul. This will take generations to restore." Ignorant of Religion

Bishop Ivan Dias, a Vatican diplomat here, said, "More than the churches, we need to build up the human person." Monsignor Dias, an Indian prelate, is Papal Nuncio, or ambassador, to Albania, and he was also named by Pope John Paul II to be bishop in charge of all Roman Catholics, in the virtual absence of Albanian priests still able to serve.

Of 300 priests in this country when the Communists came to power, only 30 survive, said Monsignor Dias.

Mr. Fico said: "The Catholics suffered the most. They were the most loyal to their faith, the most intransigent. It is to their honor that they were the most persecuted."

Because of the terror engendered by a vast network of informers, people here say, parents did not dare pass on their faith.

"We were afraid to tell our children that secretly we continued to pray," said Peter Rama, 77 years old, an elder of Annunciation Church. "We feared they might talk about it outside."

As a result, the many who now flock to mosques and churches are for the most part ignorant of the religion they are learning to profess.

"The mosques are full of young people who know nothing about Islam," said Sali Tivari, Secretary General of the Muslim Community.

All faiths have started seminaries and schools, and several Islamic countries have sent young men here to teach Albanian youths. Christian teachers report that their task is made exceptionally difficult by what Monsignor Dias says the Pope called "Communism at its worst" when he sent him here.

"They reduced them to subhuman condition," the Bishop said. "I find the material sometimes is very raw."

A version of this article appears in print on March 27, 1992, on Page A00003 of the National edition with the headline: ALBANIA'S CLERICS LEAD A REBIRTH. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe